The left is angry at Obama’s failed promises (a failed promise = a lie, by the way) as well. Obama promised to close Gitmo. He lied. Obama promised to have had the troops home from Iraq by now. He lied. Obama promised to resolve the conflict in Afghanistan with his own personal magnificence. And more than TWICE as many American soldiers gave their lives under Obama in Afghanistan in 2009 than during Bush’s last year in office.

At the event of the “national prayer breakfast” in Washington on Thursday, U.S. President Barack Obama has urged his fellow countrymen to adhere to the ‘spirit of civility’, affirming that “civility is not a sign of weakness”.

The event which attracts leading political, religious and business leaders was witness to the famous oratorical power of the US president.

“Too often that spirit (of civility) is missing without the spectacular tragedy,” Mr. Obama said. “We become numb to the day-to-day crises. We become absorbed with our abstract arguments, our ideological disputes, and our contests for power. And in this tower of babble, we lose the sound of God’s voice.”

He remarked that we should be open to differing views and make a concerted effort to abandon the cynicism and skepticism that have done enough harm to American politics already.

Obama has repeatedly dishonestly demonized Republicans as obstructionists and hatemongers – which, for the record, is a very obstructionistic and hatemongering thing for him to do.

I mean, the fact of the matter is is that many of you, if you voted with the administration on something, are politically vulnerable in your own base, in your own party. You’ve given yourselves very little room to work in a bipartisan fashion because what you’ve been telling your constituents is, “This guy’s doing all kinds of crazy stuff that’s going to destroy America.”

And how are Democrats supposed to embrace Republican ideas in a bipartisan fashion when Democrats just like YOU repeatedly demonize George Bush and demagogue Republicans for “the failed ideas of the past,” Mr. Hussein?

There’s a joke that Obama finally honored George Bush by naming the tectonic region beneath Haiti as “Bush’s Fault.” It’s not far from the truth.

Does Barry Husein seriously not realize that every single Democrat in the Senate voted for ObamaCare (not withstanding the outright bribes such as the Louisiana Purchase and the Nebraska Purchase)? Since when is it that every single Democrat voting for a Democrat bill is good, but every single Republican voting against a Democrat bill is bad? Wouldn’t both Republicans AND Democrats be voting both for and against a bipartisan bill?

Since Democrats love to claim about how “bipartisan” they have been, I would love to see a Democrat offer me a list reciting 100 specific instances in which Obama or Democrats have said, “We’ll do this your way” on significant elements of any and all legislation.

It would be nice if Obama and Democrats paid attention to the giant log in their own eyes. Just for once in their lives.

New York Times columnist Frank Rich would have rebelled against the notion that opposing President Bush’s policies was unpatriotic. But he can shamelessly declare that opposing Obama’s agenda is unpatriotic – even if you’re John McCain. Rich wrote on Sunday:

If [Harry] Reid can serve as the face of Democratic fecklessness in the Senate, then John McCain epitomizes the unpatriotic opposition. On Wednesday night he could be seen sneering when Obama pointed out that most of the debt vilified by Republicans happened on the watch of a Republican president and Congress that never paid for “two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program.”

Rich wasn’t going to find it ridiculous that Obama was blaming Bush for an “expensive” Medicare entitlement that Democrats voted for and/or felt wasn’t expensive enough – just as Obama blames Bush for the deficit effects of TARP, which he voted for.

It should be remembered that John McCain spent something like six years in the hellhole of the Hanoi Hilton in Vietnam and suffered terribly physically as a result. To accuse him of being “unpatriotic” after what he went through for his country is a disgrace from a disgrace of a newspaper.

Not to be outdone as a moral disgrace, Chris Matthews basically compared the Republican Party to the leftist communist regime that murdered well over a million people:

Chris Matthews compared the far right wing of the Republican Party to the Khmer Rouge, the genocidal Cambodian communist party led by Pol Pot, in MSNBC’s coverage of President Obama’s Q&A with House Republicans Friday night.

“The Republican Party is under assault from its far right,” Matthews said. “I don’t think I can remember either party being under assault by its extremes. I mean, there seems to be a new sort of purity test that unless you’re far right, you’re not a Republican, and this sort of tea party testing they’re doing now.”

Matthews called the party’s pull from the far right “frightening” in comparing it to the Cambodian regime.

“So what’s going on out there in the Republican Party is kind of frightening,” he said, “almost Cambodia reeducation camp going on in that party, where they’re going around to people, sort of switching their minds around saying, ‘If you’re not far right, you’re not right enough.’ And I think that it’s really – there’s going to be a lot of extreme language on the Republican side. And maybe, it will be a circular firing squad when this is all over.”

Just two days prior, Matthews came under fire for saying that he forgot President Obama was black for an hour while watching his State of the Union, a post-racial comment he would later clarify.

Rachel Maddow on Friday referred to attendees of the National Tea Party convention in Nashville, Tennessee, as white-hooded racists.

Continuing MSNBC’s sad tradition, Maddow first attacked one of the convention’s speakers: “The opening speech last night was given by failed presidential candidate, ex-congressman and professional anti-immigrant, Tom Tancredo who started the event off with a bang, a big loud racist bang.”

From there, she went after the audience (video embedded below the fold with transcript).

What a bigoted, vicious, racist thing of you to say, Rachel. But according to Obama, who only attacks Fox News for being biased, Barry Hussein tacitly approves of every single word.

And we can get back to Barack Obama and pretty much the entire Democrat Party as repeatedly demagoguing the Republican Party as “the party of no” when it is now an openly acknowledged fact that they were never any such thing.

Despite the “lecture” by the commander-in-chief, as one member described it, Republicans had the opportunity to articulate the proposals they’ve sent to the president over the past year.

And for the first time, Obama acknowledged that House Republicans had crafted measures to stimulate the economy, reduce the budget deficit and reduce health insurance costs.

At a number of times during the rare, televised, question and answer session with members, the president said that he had read many of their proposals.

“I’ve actually read your bills,” the president said to a packed banquet room at Baltimore’s Marriott Renaissance hotel.

In other words, it is now a matter of public record that Democrats have been intentionally lying, misrepresenting, slandering, and demagoguing Republicans all along. Why on earth should Republicans have cooperated with these vile people?

So Democrats can just shut the hell up with their accusations of Republicans saying or doing ANYTHING until they clean up the thousands of cockroach nests that constitute their political wing, and start being HONEST for once in their lives.

Personally, I am quite willing to cease fire on the rhetoric wars; all I need to see is for Barack Obama to denounce the mainline media for their lies rather than continually attacking Fox News; all I need to see is the Maddows and the Olbermanns and the Mathews of the news to be fired; all I need to see is for the left to quit demonizing and demagoguing. And I will happily practice all the “tolerance” and “civility” Obama wants.

The problem is that that will never happen, because the left is demagogic and hypocritical to their very cores of their dried-out, shriveled little souls.

And the fact that Barack Obama is out in front of the cameras beseeching for “tolerance” and “civility” while his minions are viciously and hatefully attacking day after day without any rebuke from the president just proves my point.

A lot of things will change because of the election – mostly by Independents and even Democrats – of Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts.

A lot of things that Democrats and the lamestream media believed were irrefutably true have been shockingly and conclusively demonstrated to have been totally false.

Did the voters in even the bluest of blue states like the Obama agenda? No. Did they like his health care boondoggle? No. Did they like the Democrats’ massive spending? No. Did they like the huge tax increases they see coming? No. Did they like the way Obama was handling terrorism? No.

And that is now a carved-in-stone fact. It follows the reality demonstrated by the previous statewide elections in Virginia and New Jersey. Three states that voted for Obama in large numbers have now turned against him and ignored his personal appeals to vote for Democrats.

Pretty much exactly what Fox News was accurately reporting all along.

The mainstream media, the Democrat establishment, and the Obama White House have been lying to you. They have been spreading propaganda. They have advanced demagoguery. They have broadcast their agenda rather than reality. Fox News, virtually alone, has been reporting the facts all along.

Barack Obama promised that he would change the poisonous political dynamic and create a new era of bipartisanship. Back in March of 2008, the New York Times correctly identified this as the CORE of Barack Obama’s promise to the American people. But he lied.

Did Obama even attempt to live up to his core promise? Not even close.

“Don’t come to the table with the same tired arguments and worn ideas that helped to create this crisis,” he admonished in a speech.

That speech – with that hard core partisan attack – was delivered within less than THREE WEEKS of his taking office. Obama was claiming that Republicans didn’t even have a right to present their ideas, much less have any of their ideas or contributions considered. Some attempt at “bipartisanship.”

At first it was reported that President Barack Obama wasn’t even aware of the nationwide Tea Party protests that occurred on April 15. But now he’s out criticizing them and the Fox News Channel.

In a town hall meeting in St. Louis on April 29, Obama was asked about fiscal discipline and entitlement reform. In his response, he took a shot at the Fox News Channel and the tea party movement, insisting he’s “happy to have a serious conversation” with them.

“So, when you see – those of you who are watching certain news channels that on which I’m not very popular and you see folks waving tea bags around, let me just remind them that I am happy to have a serious conversation about how we are going to cut our health care costs down over the long term, how we are going to stabilize Social Security,” Obama said.

As has now been conclusively demonstrated in three separate statewide races in states that Obama had easily carried, the Tea Party protesters represent the will of the people, and Obama represents what the people don’t want.

Obama said, “we need a leader who can finally move beyond the divisive politics of Washington and bring Democrats, independents and Republicans together to get things done.” And then he launched one attack after another against the American people and the press that was accurately reporting the facts.

Obama was like a pathological narcissist who couldn’t emotionally handle even the most legitimate criticism from Fox News.

“First of all, I’ve got one television station entirely devoted to attacking my administration.”

Clearly referring to FOX, the president continued:

“Well, that’s a pretty big megaphone,” he said. “And you’d be hard-pressed, if you watched the entire day, to find a positive story about me on that front.

“We welcome people who are asking us some, you know, tough questions,” he continued. “And I think that I’ve been probably as accessible as any president in the first six months — press conferences, taking questions from reporters, being held accountable, being transparent about what it is that we’re trying to do. I think that, actually, the reason that people have been generally positive about what we’ve tried to do is they feel as if I’m available and willing to answer questions, and we haven’t been trying to hide them all.”

After a recent public sighting, fears had mounted that the one-time, long-term senator might rebel against traditional White House strictures and start acting on all the administration’s oft-promised promises of government transparency and official openness running back into 2008.

But the VP’s public schedule today puts all those fears to rest. […]

DAILY GUIDANCE FOR THE VICE PRESIDENT, Thursday, January 14, 2010:

In the morning, the President and the Vice President will receive the Presidential Daily Briefing and the Economic Daily Briefing in the Oval Office. These briefings are closed press.

At 11:30 AM, the Vice President will meet with Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood to discuss the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. This meeting is closed press.

Afterwards, the President and the Vice President will have lunch in the Private Dining Room. This lunch is closed press.

At 1:00 PM, the Vice President will meet with Iraqi Vice President Adil Abd al-Mahdi in the Roosevelt Room. There will be a pool spray at the bottom of this meeting; gather time is 1:45 PM in the Brady Briefing Room. [But note: the LA Times defines “pool spray” as “a coded message to media that a few select members will be allowed in to take pictures briefly — possibly for only a few seconds — as Biden and his guest pretend to continue their previously private conversation as if the meeting was open.”]

(UPDATE 2:20 p.m.: The White House issued its own report on this closed meeting. Both paragraphs are added below at the end of the VP’s schedule.)

Then, at 2:15 PM, the Vice President will meet with Earl Devaney, chairman of the Recovery Act Transparency and Accountability Board. This meeting is closed press. ###

Senior Obama administration officials took to the airwaves Sunday to accuse Fox News of pushing a particular point of view and not being a real news network.

The White House is calling on other news organizations to isolate and alienate Fox News as it sends out top advisers to rail against the cable channel as a Republican Party mouthpiece.

Top political strategists question the decision by the Obama administration to escalate its offensive against Fox News. And as of Monday, the four other major television networks had not given any indication that they intend to sever their ties with Fox News.

But several top White House officials have taken aim at Fox News since communications director Anita Dunn branded Fox “opinion journalism masquerading as news” in an interview last Sunday.

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel told CNN on Sunday that President Obama does not want “the CNNs and the others in the world [to] basically be led in following Fox.”

Obama senior adviser David Axelrod went further by calling on media outlets to join the administration in declaring that Fox is “not a news organization.”

“Other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way,” Axelrod counseled ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “We’re not going to treat them that way.”

Asked Monday about another Axelrod claim that Fox News is just trying to make money, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that while all media companies fall under that description, “I would say sometimes programming can be tilted toward accentuating those profits.”

But by urging other news outlets to side with the administration, Obama officials dramatically upped the ante in the war of words that began earlier this month with Dunn’s comments.

So Obama official after Obama official, and then Obama himself, denounce Fox News as “pushing a particular point of view.”

For Fox News, that “particular point of view” has been the truth – something the Obama administration utterly fails to comprehend.

What Obama wants is for Fox News to advance the same pro-liberal propaganda that so much of the rest of the media has dumped onto the airwaves like cafeteria slime.

Again, the proven, documented results of elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and now the incredible result of Massachusetts, prove that Fox News was telling the truth about what was going on all along.

Based on their reaction, it is readily apparent that Obama cannot see through his ideological propaganda, and will therefore continue to sink in power and popularity. Meanwhile, Fox News, as the dominant reporter of the truth, will continue to grow in both power and profitability.

President Obama, “But what we will do is, we’ll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies.”

And we find that that’s a lie, too. Abortion IS funded by this bill, as even Democrats are openly acknowledging now (at least now that they got the vote they wanted). Everything these Democrats are telling us is lies.

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is getting attention for an interview yesterday in which she essentially admits that the American public would be forced to pay for abortions under the Senate health are bill and then relies on accounting gimmicks to suggests that’s not the case.

“I would say that the Senate language, which was negotiated by Senators Barbara Boxer and Patty Murray, who are very strong defenders of women’s health services and choices for women, take a big step forward from where the House left it with the Stupak amendment,” the pro-abortion Obama administration official said.

Sebelius said she thinks the language does a “good job making sure there are choices for women, making sure there are going to be some plan options, and making sure that while public funds aren’t used.”

She added: “That would be an accounting procedure, but everybody in the exchange would do the same thing, whether you’re male or female, whether you’re 75 or 25, you would all set aside a portion of your premium that would go into a fund, and it would not be earmarked for anything, it would be a separate account that everyone in the exchange would pay.”

“It is a bit confusing, but it’s really an accounting that would apply across the board and not just to women, and certainly not just to women who want to choose abortion coverage,” Sebelius concluded.

Ed Morrissey, a HotAir blogger, noticed the interview and pointed out how Sebelius essentially admitted everyone would pay into the exchange but denied that public funds would be used for abortions.

“What constitutes the notion of ‘public funds?'” he asked. “If the government forces us to pay into a fund, and then controls the distribution of those funds, are those funds not ‘public?'”

“Sebelius praises the abortion-funding language in the Reid bill, as it maintains a flow of funds for abortion coverage that everyone — and she means everyone — supplies,” Morrissey adds.

Morrissey says the health care bill’s system of government funding of abortion is “only confusing if you bought Ben Nelson’s dodge that Reid had changed the abortion-funding language in any significant way.”

“If the government forces it citizens to pay into premium exchanges and then controls the distribution of that money, then it becomes a public fund in any interpretation. That’s especially true if its intent is to be a slush fund for bureaucrats to apply to whatever purpose they see fit,” he concludes.

Sebelius could eventually play a major role in abortion funding because of the Mikulski amendment, which makes it so the Obama administration can define abortion as “preventative care” and force insurance companies to pay for them.

So that’s how the Democrat’s prevent public funding to pay for abortion. They dishonestly, with clear malicious intent, lie and hide behind bureaucratic gimmickry to not just use public money to pay for abortions while denying their doing it, but to go for broke in forcing public money in for abortions in the guise of “preventative care.”

This outrage violates the American spirit and is yet another liberal fascist tyranny.

Thomas Jefferson put it best:

“To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.” –Thomas Jefferson

I believe abortion is a moral crime. I believe that abortion results in the unjustified homicide of an innocent human being.

And to go even further, I believe this health care bill constitutes the socialist statist takeover of the most important and sacred 1/6th of our economy. I believe that this bill will all-too soon result in medical rationing, and the death by medical neglect of millions of innocent human beings to resolve the next budget crisis.

And according to every single major poll, most Americans agree with me.

But it doesn’t matter to Democrats. They see an opportunity to redefine America and make it something more far more akin to Karl Marx and Chairman Mao than to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

“The C-SPAN networks will commit the necessary resources to covering all of these sessions LIVE and in their entirety,” Lamb wrote. “We will also, as we willingly do each day, provide C-SPAN’s multi-camera coverage to any interested member of the Capitol Hill broadcast pool.”

Lamb reminded the leaders that “President Obama, Senate and House leaders, many of your rank-and-file members, and the nation’s editorial pages have all talked about the value of transparent discussions on reforming the nation’s health care system. Now that the process moves to the critical stage of reconciliation between the Chambers, we respectfully request that you allow the public full access, through television, to legislation that will affect the lives of every single American.”

Specifically, then-Sen. Obama said on the campaign trail that “we’ll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so the people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents and who is making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies.”

Ah, yes. Let’s talk about specifics. Remember when Barack Hussein, the lying weasel in chief, said that? Let’s repeat it in bold face:

“we’ll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so the people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents and who is making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies.”

Here’s the former head of the Democratic National Convention exposing the lie of Obama pretending to be protecting the people from private insurance companies. DNC Chairman Howard Dean recently said:

“This is a bigger bailout for the insurance industry than AIG,” former Democratic National Committee chairman and medical doctor Howard Dean told “Good Morning America’s” George Stephanopoulos today. “A very small number of people are going to get any insurance at all, until 2014, if the bill works.

“This is an insurance company’s dream, this bill,” Dean continued. “This is the Washington scramble, and I think it’s ill-advised.”

Not to mention the Louisiana Purchase II, when Obama bought Mary Landrieu’s vote for $300 million. Not to mention the purchase of Ben Nelson’s shocking betrayal of his state that has Nebraska frothing mad with outrage.

Mr. McCAIN. My response is, I don’t know what deal has been cut in Senator Reid’s office, as the deal was cut with the pharmaceutical companies and the deal was cut with the AMA and the deal was cut with the hospital association. But I know what the effect is. I know what the effect is. The bill would slice $55 billion—-

Mr. BAUCUS. This is not on my time because he is going to filibuster over there.

Mr. McCAIN. The House bill would slice $55 billion over 10 years for projected Medicare spending on home health services while the Senate bill would take $43 billion. I know that. But I don’t know the details of the deal that was cut over where the white smoke comes out. I don’t know what the deal was. I know what the deal was with PhRMA. I know what the deal was with PhRMA. They told them they would oppose drug reimportation from Canada, and they told PhRMA they would not allow competition for Medicare patients.

So I don’t know the deal that was cut that bought them, but I know deals have been going on, and I know they are unsavory. I know people, such as the lady who was just referred to, Bertha Milliard, are not too interested in seeing their home health care cut.

Mr. BAUCUS. If the Senator will yield, with time being equally divided on both sides for this colloquy.

Mr. McCAIN. I don’t know what the deal was—-

Mr. BAUCUS. I can tell the Senator the deal. I am going to tell the Senator the deal.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona has the floor.

Mr. McCAIN. I don’t know what the deal was, but we will find out, just like the deals that were cut with all of these other organizations.

Mr. BAUCUS. I will tell the Senator what the deal was.

Mr. McCAIN. This place is full of lobbyists. I can’t walk through the hallway without bumping into one of their lobbyists. If the Senator keeps interrupting, he is violating the rules of the Senate. He needs to learn the rules of the Senate.

Here’s a CNN video detailing part of the exchange:

The CNN reporter speaking following the video confrontation between McCain and Baucus reminds us of the August closed-door deal between the Obama White House and the pharmaceutical companies.

And while John McCain exposes that the Democrat Party is the party of corruption, Max Baucus – the Democrat who had such a powerful hand in shaping the health care boondoggle – was exposing that he is a slobbering drunk on the very floor of the Senate.

And which party is making all the sweetheart deals that they don’t DARE allow the people to see, lest they gather in mass with pitchforks and torches to destroy the monster that lives in the White House?

Here’s one of the leaders of the Democrat Party acknowledging that the health care debate was so secretive and so byzantine that even HE didn’t have a freaking clue what was going on, let alone Republican lawmakers (and obviously the public) who have been completely shut out.

Pelosi emerged from a meeting with her leadership team and committee chairs in the Capitol to face an aggressive throng of reporters who immediately hit her with C-SPAN’s request that she permit closed-door final talks on the bill to be televised.

A reporter reminded the San Francisco Democrat that in 2008, then-candidate Obama opined that all such negotiations be open to C-SPAN cameras.

“There are a number of things he was for on the campaign trail,” quipped Pelosi, who has no intention of making the deliberations public.

Obama has been for secrecy, disingenuity, corruption, demagoguery, partisan ideology, and socialism. He sure hasn’t been for the American people, whether on the campaign trail or since.

And that’s what Barack Obama and the Democrat Party are doing to health care now. Except that the catastrophe that they are going to create through health care will be a thousand times worse than the catastrophe they created through the stimulus.

The “change” Obama has brought to America has been hard-core partisanship and corrupt Chicago politics.

No wonder they absolutely WILL NOT allow you to know what’s really going on as they make deal after deal behind closed doors.

“That’s what I will do in bringing all parties together, not negotiating behind closed doors, but bringing all parties together, and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are, because part of what we have to do is enlist the American people in this process,” Obama said at a debate in Los Angeles on Jan. 31, 2008.

The special interests and lobbyists, he said, “will resist anything that we try to do. … And the antidote to that is making sure that the American people understand what is at stake.”

Obama promised:

To achieve health care reform, “I’m going to have all the negotiations around a big table. We’ll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies — they’ll get a seat at the table, they just won’t be able to buy every chair. But what we will do is, we’ll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies. And so, that approach, I think is what is going to allow people to stay involved in this process.”

Not negotiating behind closed doors. Bringing all parties together. Broadcasting the negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see.

Those were the words of Barack Hussein Obama, documented liar, fraud, and hypocrite.

At the Capitol during a rare Sunday session of the Senate, Obama delivered a closed-door pep talk to the fractious Democratic caucus that lasted about 45 minutes. Deep divisions remain over abortion coverage, but there was hope for compromise on whether the government should directly offer health insurance in competition with private companies.“They’re going to get it done,” Obama said as he left. He avoided specifics in the meeting with senators and took no questions.

Washington, Oct 21 – For days now, a small group of Democrats in Congress and members of the Obama Administration have been meeting behind closed doors on Capitol Hill to hammer out the details of their costly government takeover of health care. This is despite President Obama’s repeated pledges on the campaign trail last year that these discussions would be open and televised. One Capitol Hill newspaper has called these secret talks “a slap at … the taxpayers who will be asked to foot the bill for whatever reform plan does get adopted.” Now Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL) has introduced a resolution demanding that these critical negotiations be conducted in the open “under the watchful eye of the American people.” With the fate of one-sixth of our economy in the balance, anything less than full transparency is unacceptable.

And now we find that Republicans – who have been shut out all along – are not the only ones who have been excluded in this byzantine, twisted, closed-door process:

The 10 Democratic senators who crafted a healthcare compromise are keeping its details a secret, says Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Friday.

Responding to a complaint by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) that Republicans haven’t been told what’s in the new bill, Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, responded that he’s in the same position.

“I would say to the senator from Arizona that I’m in the dark almost as much as he is. And I’m in the leadership,” Durbin said on the Senate floor.

Stop and think about it. This process has become so byzantine, so closed, and so secretive, that even the #2 Democrat in the Senate is completely in the dark as to what is going on. Ten Democrats – and a whopping load of special interests – are formulating the takeover of 1/6th of the American economy.

Mr. McCAIN. Could I ask my friend about the situation as it exists right now? Right now, no Member on this side has any idea as to the specifics of the proposal the majority leader, I understand, has sent to OMB for some kind of scoring. Is that the way we want to do business, that a proposal that will be presented to the Senate sometime next week and voted on immediately–that is what we are told–is that the way to do business in a bipartisan fashion? Should we not at least be informed as to what the proposal is the Senate majority leader is going to propose to the entire Senate within a couple days? Shouldn’t we even know what it is?

Mr. DURBIN. I would say to the Senator from Arizona, I am in the dark almost as much as he is, and I am in the leadership. The reason is, because the Congressional Budget Office, which scores the managers’ amendment, the so-called compromise, has told us, once you publicly start debating it, we will publicly release it. We want to basically see whether it works, whether it works to continue to reduce the deficit, whether it works to continue to reduce the growth in health care costs.

We had a caucus after this was submitted to the Congressional Budget Office, where Senator Reid and other Senators who were involved in it basically stood and said: We are sorry, we can’t tell you in detail what was involved. But you will learn, everyone will learn, it will be as public information as this bill currently is on the Internet. But the Congressional Budget Office has tied our hands at this point putting it forward. Basically, what I know is what you know, having read press accounts of what may be included.

Mr. McCAIN. Could I ask my friend from Illinois–and by the way, I would like to do this again. Perhaps when he can get more substance into many of the issues.

Mr. DURBIN. Same time, same place tomorrow?

Mr. McCAIN. I admit these are unusual times. But isn’t that a very unusual process, that here we are discussing one-sixth of the gross national product; the bill before us has been a product of almost a year of sausage-making. Yet here we are at a position on December 12, with a proposal that none of us, except, I understand, one person, the majority leader, knows what the final parameters are, much less informing the American people. I don’t get it.

Durbin acknowledges that Republicans have been kept completely in the dark (and fed on horse sh*t) because even he himself – the number two man in the Democrat Senate – has been kept in the dark. He blames the Congressional Budget Office – because it’s either the CBO, or the Democrats, and he will not blame the Democrats.

Newsflash: the CBO does not have the power to prevent Democrats from releasing all the details of the Democrats’ bill. Democrats have refused to release the details of the Democrats’ bill.

We are in a situation in which a tiny handful of Democrats are writing up an ideological and partisan takeover of a whopping chunk of the economy. And if you think these people have any integrity at all, you need to reread this article, because you clearly didn’t understand what is coming out of Washington.